The story so far: The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) recently said that the exercise to sequence 10,000 Indian human genomes and create a database under the Centre-backed Genome India Project is about two-thirds complete. About 7,000 Indian genomes have already been sequenced of which, 3,000 are available for public access by researchers. 

The proponents of the project say it would enable researchers anywhere in the world to learn about genetic variants unique to the Indian population. Countries including the United Kingdom, China, and the United States have launched similarprogrammes to sequence at least 1,00,000 of their population’s genomes. 

What is genome sequencing?

The human genome is the entire set of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)residing in the nucleus of every cell of each human body. It carries the complete genetic information responsible for the development and functioning of the organism. The DNA consists of a double-stranded molecule built up by four bases – adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). Every base on one strand pairs with a complementary base on the other strand (A with T and C with G) In all, the genome is made up of approximately 3.05 billion such base pairs. .

While the sequence or order of base pairs is identical in all humans, compared to that of a mouse or another species, there are differences in the genome of every human being that makes them unique. The process of deciphering the order of base pairs, to decode the genetic fingerprint of a human is called genome sequencing.

In 1990, a group of scientists began to work on determining the whole sequence of the human genome under the Human Genome Project. The first results of the complete human genome sequence were given in 2003. However, some percentage of repetitive parts were yet to be sequenced. The Human Genome Project released the latest version of the complete human genome in 2023, with a 0.3% error margin.

Costs of sequencing differ based on the methods employed or the accuracy expected. Since an initial rough draft of the human genome was made available, companies have aimed to reduce the cost of generating a fairly accurate “draft” of any individual genome— it has now fallen to a tenth, or to around $1,000 or less (approximately ₹70,000). 

Genomic sequencing has now evolved to a stage where large sequencers can process thousands of samples simultaneously. There are several approaches to genome sequencing — including whole genome sequencing or next generation sequencing — that have different advantages.

The process of whole-genome sequencing, made possible by the Human Genome Project, now facilitates the reading of a person’s individual genome to identify differences from the average human genome. These differences or mutations can tell us about each human’s susceptibility or future vulnerability to a disease, their reaction or sensitivity to a particular stimulus, and so on.

What are the applications of genome sequencing?

Genome sequencing has been used to evaluate rare disorders, preconditions for disorders, even cancer from the viewpoint of genetics, rather than as diseases of certain organs. Nearly 10,000 diseases — including cystic fibrosis and thalassemia — are known to be the result of a single gene malfunctioning.

In the past decade, it has also been used as a tool for prenatal screening, to investigate whether the foetus has sgenetic disorders or anomalies. The New York Times notes that the Nobel Prize-winning technology crispr, which relies on sequencing, may potentially allow ocientists to repair disease-causing mutations in human genomes. Aiquid biopsies, where a small amount of blood is examined for DNA markers, could help diagnose cancer long before symptoms appear. 

In public health, however, sequencing has been used to read the codes of viruses—one of its first practical usages was in 2014, when a group of scientists from M.I.T and Harvard sequenced samples of Ebola from infected African patients to show how genomic data of viruses could reveal hidden pathways of transmission, which might then be halted, thus slowing or even preventing the infection’s spread. Experts say that as sequencing gets cheaper, every human’s genome may feasibly be sequenced as part of routine health care in the future, to better understand personal molecular biology and health. 

At the population level as well, genomics has several benefits. Advanced analytics and AI could be applied to essential datasets created by collecting genomic profiles across the population, allowing to develop greater understanding of causative factors and potential treatments of diseases. This would be especially relevant for rare genetic diseases, which require large datasets to find statistically important correlations.

How did it help during the pandemic?

In January 2020, at the start of the pandemic,Chinese scientist Yong-Zhen Zhang, sequenced the genome of a novel pathogen causing infections in the city of Wuhan, a New York Times report states. Mr. Zhang then shared it with his virologist friend Edward Holmes in Australia, who published the genomic code online. It was after this that virologists, epidemiologists, and pharmaceutical firms began evaluating the sequence to try and understand how to combat the virus, track the mutating variants and their intensity and spread, and to come up with a vaccine. This information was also used to create diagnostic PCR machines.

To enable an effective COVID-19 pandemic response, researchers kept track of emerging variants and conducting further studies about their transmissibility, immune escape and potential to cause severe disease. Genomic sequencing became one of the first steps in this important process. Here, the purpose of genome sequencing was to understand the role of certain mutations in increasing the virus’s infectivity. Some mutations have also been linked to immune escape, or the virus’s ability to evade antibodies, and this has consequences for vaccines and vaccine makers.

Over the course of the pandemic, the United States and United Kingdom scaled up genomic sequencing, tracked emerging variants and used that evidence for timely actions.

India also put in place a sequencing framework, and the Indian SARS-COV-2 Genomics Consortia (INSACOG), a consortium of labs across the country, was tasked with scanning coronavirus samples from patients and flagging the presence of variants known to have spiked transmission internationally. The bulk of its effort was focussed on identifying international ‘variants of concern’ (VoC) marked out by the World Health Organization as being particularly infectious. Samples from international travellers who arrived in India and tested positive were sent to INSACOG for determining the genomic variant.

As of early December 2021, the INSACOG had sequenced about 1,00,000 samples. It was also tasked with checking whether certain combinations of mutations were becoming more widespread in India.

In the later stage of the pandemic, around December 2022, when over 90% of the adult population was already fully vaccinated and over one-fourth of adults boosted, sequencing helped in targeted efforts at ebbing infections. The Health Ministry urged States to ramp up sequencing (and not increase testing) to track new variants as the virus evolved by accumulating mutations. 

What is the significance of the Genome India project?

India’s 1.3 billion-strong population consists of over 4,600 population groups,many of which are endogamous. TThus, the Indian population harbours distinct variations, with disease-causing mutations often amplified within some of these groups. Findings from population-based or disease-based human genetics research from other populations of the world cannot be extrapolated to Indians, says a note from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). But despite being a large population with diverse ethnic groups, India lacks a comprehensive catalogue of genetic variations.

Creating a database of Indian genomes allows researchers to learn about genetic variants unique to India’s population groups and use that to customise drugs and therapies. About 20 institutions across India are involved in the project, with analysis and coordination done by the Centre for Brain Research at IISc, Bangalore. The Centre’s Department of Biotechnology notes that the project will help “unravel the genetic underpinnings of chronic diseases currently on the rise in India, (for) example, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, and cancer”.

The reed snake was collected during field surveys in Oragitok, an area characterised by rich forested habitats and high ecological significance.
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement

‘Savukku’ Shankar
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The Human-Rated Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (HLVM3) for Gaganyaan’s first un-crewed flight, at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota.
| Photo Credit: File photo

Congress leader Kumari Selja felicitates former BJP MLAs Rajkumar Thukral and Bhimlal Arya, former Roorkee mayor Gaurav Goyal, BJP leaders Lakhan Singh Negi and Anuj Gupta and BSP leader Narayan Pal after joining the Congress party, at the party office, in New Delhi, on March 28 2026.
| Photo Credit: PTI

Following a communication from the oil marketing companies on Monday (March 9, 2026) that LPG cylinder supply will be affected because of the U.S.- Israel war on Iran, hotels in Coimbatore district have decided to cut down on service timings and menus. Hotels and retirement communities are exploring alternative sources of fuel.

The Sree Annapoorna Sree Gowrishankar Group put out a notice on Monday night informing customers that it would limit its menu to essential items and some items would be available only at specific hours of the day. 

K.A. Ramaswamy, president of the Coimbatore District Hoteliers Association, said the oil marketing companies stopped the supply of commercial LPG cylinders from Tuesday (March 10). “We are managing with the cylinders that we have. We have cut down on Chinese items at the live counters, removed parottas from the menu, and restricted dosa and puri items to peak hours,” he said.

The 262 hotels that are members of the association will be able to manage for a couple of days and may start shutting down operations thereafter. “There are thousands of smaller hotels in the district. No one operating in the city limits uses firewood because of inspections and safety norms. They will be the worst-hit,” he said. 

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Healthcare is entering a phase where the boundaries between medicine, technology, and data are rapidly dissolving. Digital health, once confined to electronic medical records and teleconsultations, now underpins diagnostics, drug development, population health management, chronic disease care, and patient engagement. This has not only transformed how care is delivered, but also significantly widened the range of healthcare careers with new roles emerging at the intersection of clinical care, technology, data, and systems design.

Also Read | Amazon launches AI-enabled platform to automate healthcare administrative tasks

Careers in clinical information systems, health analytics, digital therapeutics, remote patient monitoring, and healthcare AI are becoming central to how modern health systems function. This shift has triggered a rethink of healthcare education: how should students be trained for careers that require clinical understanding and digital fluency?

The traditional healthcare education of clinical knowledge and in-person care delivery is no longer sufficient. Today’s professionals are expected to work with digital platforms, clinical software, AI-enabled tools, and large-scale health data systems. Yet, most UG programmes in Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Allied Health still offer limited formal exposure to digital health. As a result, graduates often encounter complex digital systems for the first time after entering the workforce, leading to inefficiencies, workflow disruptions, and safety risks. As digital tools are deployed at scale, structured education in digital health is no longer optional.

Education paths

At the UG level, healthcare degrees must begin integrating foundational digital health education with coursework in information systems, digital care models, and healthcare data literacy. Exposure to hospital information systems, laboratory information systems, clinical decision support systems, and basic health analytics should become as routine as training in diagnostics or therapeutics.

For students from non-clinical backgrounds, specialised UG degrees in clinical informatics, point-of-care diagnostics, healthcare analytics, and digital health management are important entry points. They combine healthcare domain knowledge with training in data systems, software platforms, and healthcare operations. Postgraduate education plays a critical role in preparing the digital health workforce. Dedicated Master’s programmes in digital health, clinical information systems, health data science, healthcare analytics, and health artificial intelligence are increasingly aligned with health system and industry needs and prepare graduates to design digital care pathways, manage remote patient monitoring programmes, validate clinical software, and govern AI-enabled systems used in-patient care.

Diploma programmes serve as an important bridge between theory and practice. Postgraduate diplomas in digital health, health information systems, healthcare management, and medical technology allow students and working professionals to acquire applied skills without committing to long academic pathways. For clinicians, diplomas provide structured exposure to technology and data without requiring a complete career shift. For engineers and life sciences graduates, they offer an essential clinical context that ensures digital solutions remain grounded in real-world care delivery.

Short-term certification programmes in healthcare data analytics, AI in healthcare, digital therapeutics, software as a medical device, interoperability standards, and health information systems allow professionals to build targeted competencies. Regulatory-focused certifications covering data protection, patient privacy, and digital health compliance are equally important in a sector where governance and safety are paramount.

Beyond formal qualifications, digital health education must be competency-driven. Students need training in systems thinking to understand how clinical workflows, technology platforms, and organisational processes intersect. Data literacy, including the ability to interpret and apply insights responsibly, is now a core professional skill. Competencies in project and change management, and implementation science are also essential, as digital health initiatives often fail due to poor adoption rather than weak technology.

As digital health continues to evolve, learning must become continuous, modular, and career-long. The future will belong to those educated not only to treat patients, but to design, govern, and lead the digital systems that increasingly define modern care.

The writer is Chairman of Academy of Digital Health Sciences and former advisor to the Union Health Minister and Member of National Education Policy Committee, Government of India.

Published – March 08, 2026 10:00 am IST

Captains of the participating teams ahead of the FIH Women’s Hockey World Cup Qualifiers at the G.M.C, Balayogi Stadium in Hyderabad on March 7, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Nagara Gopal

Union Home Minister Amit Shah. File
| Photo Credit: ANI

In India, urban noise is relentless yet it is largely under-recognised as a public health concern. The average Indian urban traffic reportedly routinely reaches 80-100 dB, exceeding the World Health Organization’s recommended 70 dB limit, creating a recognised risk of hearing loss.

Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) has long been viewed as an occupational disease of factories and mines. Scientific evidence challenges this assumption. Chronic exposure to environmental noise, particularly road traffic, can cause clinically measurable damage even in the absence of industrial hazards.

Physiological impact

Scientific evidence suggests what cities dismiss as background noise may in fact be producing measurable biological injury.

CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute senior technical officer Satish K. Lokhande said NIHL typically first appears around 4 kHz. In a 2022 study on firecracker noise, Dr. Lokhande documented how repeated exposure to intense sound peaks, often exceeding 85 dB, “accumulates auditory stress,” initially causing a temporary threshold shift that becomes permanent with sustained exposure.

In another 2023 study of road tunnels that he co-authored, Dr. Lokhande found sound levels between 78.9 and 86.5 dB(A) with peak energy again concentrated at 4 kHz. Urban road traffic contributes a continuous, moderately elevated noise environment, often punctuated by horns and construction activity.

(dB(A) is short for A-weighted decibels, a sound level in decibels that has been adjusted to reflect how sensitive human hearing is at a certain frequency.)

This auditory stress doesn’t stay confined to the ear. Chronic noise activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, an important hormone-signalling system that coordinates the body’s response to stress and helps regulate energy use, immunity, mood, and sleep-wake timing. It elevates cortisol, blood pressure, and cardiovascular strain. Night-time traffic noise also fragments sleep, disrupting deep and REM stages and impairing cognition.

While Indian biomarker data remain limited, international studies have also linked long-term environmental noise exposure to cardiovascular and metabolic risk.

Health accounting

India’s legal framework recognises noise as an environmental pollutant under the Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules 2000. The Rules prescribe permissible limits for residential, commercial, and silence zones. Monitoring is episodic, concentrated around festivals or public complaints and rarely linked to health outcomes.

A 2024 study in NatureScientific Reports, led by Markandeya, formerly of the department of Civil Engineering at IIT-BHU Varanasi, examined long-term traffic noise exposure among professional drivers. It revealed a clear dose-response relationship between cumulative noise exposure and changes in the hearing threshold, especially in frequencies critical for speech.

Most urban monitoring relies on fixed-location decibel readings at select junctions or in specific time windows. Such snapshot measurements capture momentary intensity but don’t account for the length of exposure or cumulative auditory burden.

Dr. Markandeyaexplained that permissible exposure duration decreases logarithmically as decibel levels rise. “At 121 dB(A), exposure may be considered safe for one hour over a lifetime, whereas at 133 dB(A), the same duration would be unsafe.” he says, noting that CNE functions not as a snapshot but as a lifetime audit of auditory burden.

Thus, he added, cumulative noise exposure can bridge this ‘gap’ because it integrates intensity and duration, and more closely reflects real-world auditory risk.

However, India’s National Ambient Noise Monitoring Network isn’t designed to capture cumulative exposure in urban environments.

‘Underestimated burden’

Delhi Technological University professor of environmental engineering Rajeev Kumar Mishra also said, “Averages like Leq and Ldn ignore impulsive peaks from honking — which increase auditory strain.”

Leq is the constant sound level that would deliver the same total acoustic energy as the real, time-varying sound over a specified period, e.g. 1 hour, 8 hours, etc. Ldn is the 24-hour Leq-like metric but it also penalises noises between 10 pm and 7 am more to reflect greater sleep disturbance. Both levels are measured in dB(A).

“Indian planning underestimates the hearing burden,” Dr. Mishra added. Thus honking rules are unimplemented and there are no real quiet zones, leaving the damage to spread unchecked.

NIHL often remains invisible within healthcare. Doctors attribute hearing loss to ageing, habits or individual susceptibility rather than environmental exposure. High-risk groups including drivers, traffic police, roadside vendors also remain underdiagnosed without systematic screening.

Lucknow’s Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences ENT specialistAmit Kesari said that among high-risk groups, traffic police are most vulnerable due to long hours at busy intersections in open areas. Early-stage loss may appear as a 4 kHz dip in audiometry and specialised tests such as DPOAE can detect early changes. He also suggested screening these groups with audiometry every five years to quantify actual loss.

At present linking hearing loss specifically to traffic noise remains challenging due to clinical and awareness-related reasons. The classic 4 kHz dip associated with NIHL has been more consistently documented in occupational settings than in diffuse environmental exposure, and patients rarely attribute hearing loss to traffic noise.

“Traffic noise is more immediately associated with stress, anxiety, and blood pressure,” Dr. Kesari said.

Evidence-based action

In May 2023, 231 traffic personnel underwent hearing screening at Ahmedabad’s Police Stadium, conducted by Satyen Engineer, CEO of independent research outfit Yhonk India and “hearing care company” WeHear. They found the mean hearing thresholds of the left and right ears to be 44.4 dB and 42 dB, respectively, placing 60.6% and 54.5% of personnel above 40 dB.

While the findings weren’t peer-reviewed, they offered field-level evidence demonstrating occupational hearing risk among the country’s traffic police, and raised troubling questions.

“Until we have systematic data from drivers, traffic police, and other high-exposure groups, we are only estimating the scale of the problem,” Dr Kesari said.

Adamas University, Kolkata, civil engineer Argha Kamal Guha suggested that cities consider introducing low noise emission zones in places where frequent honking is known to elevate exposure levels. Such a measure, he said, could include rerouting traffic and restricting the noisiest vehicle categories, especially if the hotspots are near hospitals, residential neighborhoods, and educational institutions.

In the final analysis, integrating environmental noise metrics with routine hearing assessments, Dr. Kesari suggested, would allow earlier detection and more accurate estimation of risk. As he put it: “We have the evidence. What we lack is the mechanism to act on it.”

Rohan Singh is an independent science journalist based in Lucknow. Harish C. Phuleria is associate professor, IIT-Bombay.